Fremont neighbours complain of Hindu temple noise. Other suburbs have been here before

Top photo: the Shiva-Vishnu Temple in Livermore, California, another Bay Area Hindu temple, in January 2003. It is not the Fremont temple in this story. Photo by Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Neighbours of a Hindu temple in Fremont, California, filed more than 25 complaints with the city's code enforcement office in the past year, according to records reviewed by NBC Bay Area. They say the events bring large crowds. Some events, they say, ran during school hours.

The station's Pete Suratos reported on October 28 that the temple held an event under a special city permit the week before. Neighbours say amplified sound broke the 9 p.m. cutoff. The City of Fremont confirmed it had received complaints about that event and was looking into them.

The neighbours spoke without giving their names. They told NBC Bay Area they were not opposed to the temple's events. They want them smaller and more considerate of the people who live around them. "We have had issues with sleep," one said, in remarks quoted by the California Post. The complaint is familiar wherever temples, gurdwaras and mosques sit among houses, from California to New Jersey. Cities have answered it with permits, conditions, lawsuits and quiet deals.

The station did not name the temple. The California Post and Business Today identified it as the Fremont Hindu Temple, also called Vedic Dharma Samaj. Its website gives the same names and an address on Delaware Drive.

Romesh K. Japra, the temple's founder and chairman, answered in a statement published by India Post. He said the complaints concerned religious activities during Navratri. The temple will keep "complying with applicable regulations, and working constructively with the City of Fremont," he wrote.

Japra wrote that Diwali, Holi and the temple's Festival of Globe "have already been moved to larger venues elsewhere in Fremont," to handle bigger crowds and spare the neighbourhood. He pointed to one couple. The couple moved in less than two years ago and has raised concerns with city officials, police and the media, he wrote, adding that other neighbours had praised the temple. Thoughtful India is not naming them. "Our doors remain open for meaningful dialogue," he wrote.

The temple also said it had tried to arrange meetings with the couple, "without success so far." In July, Fremont officials met neighbours and temple representatives to look for common ground, NBC Bay Area reported. It was not clear whether the couple attended. NBC said the temple's president had not responded to its request for comment by the time it published.

Fremont's noise ordinance, adopted in April 2021, bars disturbing noise between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Permitted special events are exempt, the police department's summary says. The city told NBC its staff would continue "monitoring activities and adjusting future permitted activities as appropriate."

Fremont is a city where this argument has a large audience. Asian Indians number 68,300 of its 228,000 residents, or 30 percent, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024. Half were born abroad, the bureau's QuickFacts says.

The city has handled a bigger version before. In December 2012 neighbours of the Gurdwara Sahib of Fremont on Gurdwara Road objected to its expansion plans, citing traffic and parking, Patch reported. It draws up to 8,000 people for special events. The gurdwara said it had added a bus stop, reduced outdoor noise and warned neighbours before big events.

Early in 2013 the planning commission approved the expansion unanimously, with more than 50 conditions, Patch reported. They included special event permits and meetings with residents twice a year. Commissioner David Bonaccorsi said one proposed condition, security cameras in the parking lot, raised "a significant First Amendment issue." The commission dropped it, 5 to 2.

Federal law adds its own limits. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed by Congress in 2000, bars local governments from zoning rules that place a "substantial burden" on worship without a compelling reason, or that treat religious assemblies worse than secular ones, according to the Justice Department. The department enforces it. By the law's 20th anniversary in 2020 the department had opened 553 investigations under it and filed 28 lawsuits, it reported.

The law covers zoning and land use. The Fremont complaints fall under the city's noise ordinance and its event permits.

New Jersey had a festival-noise fight like Fremont's in 2007. In Edison that year, an outdoor Navratri festival on Meridian Road ran over three weekends, and the office of the township spokesman, Jerry Barca, logged 103 noise complaints, according to a local report reprinted by Hinduism Today. "This venue does not work," Barca said. The township declined to permit the outdoor festival the next year. "We're not canceling Navratri," he said.

In Bridgewater, the Sri Venkateswara Temple waited five years to expand. In 2006 the zoning board rejected its third, smaller plan. A resident, Suzanne Merten, said the neighbourhood's concern was "traffic, noise pollution, light pollution," according to a report reprinted by Hinduism Today. The board said yes in April 2009. The vote was unanimous, a later report said. The temple agreed to keep its logo and the Om symbol off its fence. "It took five years and we finally got what we wanted," said its chairman, Madhusudhan Rao Chava.

Not every plan survives. In May 2024 the Paramus Board of Adjustment voted 7 to 0 to deny the Swaminarayan Gurukul Cultural Center's plan to expand on Spring Valley Road, its minutes show. The plan sought 11 variances. The minutes summarise one neighbour, Jason George, as saying he "loves the people of the cultural center" and finds the plan "just too large for the location."

East Brunswick approved with limits. In June 2022 its planning board cleared the Sadhu Vaswani Center's expansion on Ryders Lane, MyCentralJersey reported. Three members, including Mayor Brad Cohen, voted no. The paper did not give the full tally. Conditions cap the hall at 200 people and keep events indoors. "The neighborhood gains nothing from this temple being built," said Debbie Sandberg, a neighbour. Allen S. Lalwani, the centre's chief executive, said it had revised its plans repeatedly.

Diwali fireworks bring complaints of their own. During Diwali in 2025, Edison officials had 40 calls about fires, and one family lost its home, WABC reported. In South Ozone Park, Queens, the fire department blamed Diwali fireworks for a house fire on Lincoln Street. "Find another way of celebrating, because that's dangerous and it's not legal," a neighbour, Juanita Cologne, told the station.

On Long Island, the Town of Oyster Bay halted construction of the Guru Gobind Singh Sikh Center in 2015, saying the work did not comply with its site and parking plans, NBC News reported. The congregation sued under the federal land-use law. A town spokesman, Brian Devine, told NBC by email that the case was not about religion. In November 2016 the two sides settled. The town approved the plans, and the centre agreed to lower its parking-lot lights and fit filters for cooking smells, NBC News reported.

Jamaica Bay, in Queens, raises a different complaint. Worshippers leave puja offerings on shores the National Park Service manages. Since 2007 the service has worked with the local Indo-Caribbean Hindu community, and in 2012 its rangers visited mandirs and met the USA Pandits Council, its website says. Its rule is plain. "No items can be left on our shores, period."

Texas has had its own disputes. Flower Mound's town council approved a site plan for a Hindu temple 4 to 0 in July 2025, after a neighbour, Vincent Gallo, cited noise and traffic and offered to buy the land for $800,000, Community Impact reported. Temple officials said that was not feasible. "We are not allowed to deny someone the reasonable use of their property," said a council member, Adam Schiestel.

In Frisco in May 2026, the city council heard hours of testimony against a Hindu mandir, a Jain temple and a mosque, some of it about Sharia, KERA reported. The council chose not to pursue an appeal. The city attorney had warned it could invite a lawsuit. All three projects remain on track.

In Cary, North Carolina, a 2019 temple rezoning drew questions and no objectors. When the Sri Venkateswara Temple sought it, council members asked about building height and the planned widening of Chapel Hill Road, the Cary Citizen reported. The only public speaker was the temple's vice-chair.

In Florida, Orange County commissioners voted 5 to 2 in January 2024 to uphold a zoning board's rejection of a BAPS temple in rural Gotha, the Orlando Sentinel reported. It would have had a 43-foot spire. A resident, Kim Cousins, had earlier complained to the paper of a weekday "parade of bumper-to-bumper traffic."

In Mississauga, west of Toronto, the flashpoint has been Diwali fireworks. Councillors decided in October 2025 to enforce the rules more strictly and stopped short of a full ban that city staff had recommended, insauga reported. The amended bylaw took effect on January 2. It limits backyard fireworks to 6 to 10 p.m. on permit-free holidays, the city says, and this year that means Diwali, on Sunday, November 8.

Some disputes end in quieter deals. In January 2012 the Hindu Temple of St. Louis agreed with its next-door neighbours on a 15-foot setback and an eight-foot wall to block car headlights, Patch reported. Members sometimes parked at a church and a park. "They've always been good neighbors," said Rick Dutton, who lives in the subdivision next door.

Thoughtful India found no reported noise dispute at the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago in Lemont, Illinois. It opened in 1986.

The Fremont temple's calendar lists Deepawali and Sri Lakshmi Puja for Sunday, November 8. It does not say where.